Newsbriefs ---------------------------------- Raymond Kurzweil presents Friedberg Lecture ---------------------------------- Raymond C. Kurzweil, a leading figure in applied artificial intelligence and electronic music technology, will present the third annual Sidney M. Friedberg Lecture in Music and Psychology at 4 p.m. on April 27 in Levering Hall's Arellano Theater on the Homewood campus. Kurzweil's presentation is titled "Turing's Prophecy: Intelligent Technology in the 21st Century." Earlier, at noon on April 27, Kurzweil will speak at the Peabody Institute in the Friedberg Concert Hall at 1 E. Mount Vernon Place. His speech to the Peabody community will be on music and technology in the 21st century. Peabody student composers will also present new works for ensembles consisting of traditional instruments and one of Kurzweil's inventions, the Kurzweil K2000 synthesizer. Both events are free and open to the public. Kurzweil, founder and chairman of Kurzweil Applied Intelligence, has received nine honorary doctorates in science, engineering, music and humane letters. He was the principal developer in 1976 of the first omni-font optical character recognition device, a device that can read characters printed in any typeface, and the first print-to-speech reading machine for the blind, the Kurzweil Reading Machine, also in 1976. His book The Age of Intelligent Machines, published by MIT Press, received the 1990 Most Outstanding Computer Science Book Award from the Association of American Publishers. ------------------------------- Former national poet laureate to give reading ------------------------------- Noted poet and author Josephine Jacobsen will be the speaker for the Writing Seminars' second Sunday Spring Reading at 2 p.m., April 30, in Mudd Hall on the Homewood campus. An open reception will be held after Jacobsen's reading. All are invited and encouraged to attend. Jacobsen, 86, had her first poem published at age 11. She has since published several collections of fiction and poetry, including The Chinese Insomniacs and The Sisters. Her latest collection of poetry, In the Crevice of Time: New and Collected Poems, to be published by the Johns Hopkins University Press, is composed of 176 new and previously published poems. From 1971 to 1973, she served two terms as consultant in poetry to the Library of Congress, the position now titled national poet laureate. "She's especially remarkable to me because she's accomplished in both poetry and fiction," said Joyce Brown, a lecturer in the Writing Seminars and a friend of Jacobsen's. "The processes are very different." Jacobsen is internationally renowned and has received numerous awards for her work. She won the Lenore-Marshall Award for the best book of poetry for The Sisters; On the Island: Short Stories was nominated for the PEN-Faulkner Award. The New York Times has noted Jacobsen's poetry for its "preference for depth and precision." For more information about the Sunday reading, call 516-7563.